


closer and ignore the red upon your fingertips

by bullroars



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: (implied) - Freeform, Cannibalism, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Drabble Collection, F/M, Gen, M/M, Multi, Murder Husbands, One-Sided Relationship, Season/Series 02
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-22
Updated: 2014-07-24
Packaged: 2018-02-10 00:42:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2004285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bullroars/pseuds/bullroars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One second, a great, roaring dark, and all Bev can think as she dies is, triumphantly, <i>I gotcha, you son of a bitch.</i></p><p>(or, season two in drabbles.  something happens in hannibal's basement and the rest can't help but follow.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. bev

**Author's Note:**

> Just a few interconnected drabbles to help me get back into the swing of writing things. Title is from Tyler Knott Gregson's poem "Typewriter Series #847."

There is a moment, in Hannibal Lecter's basement, that shivers and sparks and ignites in the spaces between Hannibal and Beverly and the third, silent witness.  Bev doesn't have time to name it.  She sees Lecter and Lecter sees her and there's no _time_ \--

She draws and fires like a reflex, of course.  There's no room for doubt, not now.  Hannibal is the Ripper and Will was right, Will was right and Beverly is alive for only another twenty-six seconds, but goddamn does she make them count.

The first shot goes wide, but the second does hit him, just a graze but enough to spill his blood and send a bullet into his wall, so deep in the dark he doesn't find it, doesn't think to find it between her body and the hysterical teenager who has watched her father kill again.

In the end Price and Zeller will find that bullet, Hannibal's blood and Bev's serial number.  It's a cornerstone of Lecter's trial, one of the many things that sends him to BSHCI.  Small comforts.

Her third shot hits only darkness and her fourth shot tears through the ceiling.  Lecter will find those two bullets, and the first, and he will melt them into nothing and toss them into a river fifty miles from here, as he's done over and over again.  But he will not find the second bullet, not ever, doesn't even think about finding it, and between that and the thing on fire in the air Bev thinks, _Y_ _ou are so fucked_.

Not that it matters.  Bev has thirteen seconds to live and his arms around her throat, and no one escapes Hannibal's hands. 

Bev looks at Abigail Hobbs.  She's missing an ear and she's pale as the grave but she's alive and maybe that's what's on fire down here, the fact that Abigail is alive and everything Will said was true.  Hannibal is a killer and Will isn't and Abigail Hobbs is alive.  Bev doesn't have time to regret--she wouldn't, anyway, the evidence was solid and she always believed, just a little, in Will Graham--but she does meet Abigail's eyes, and she smiles. 

Five seconds now.  She knows, in the back of her mind, that she's going to die.  God spared Bev twice already, once in a car when she was a kid and once again on the job when she was a rookie and she doesn't get three miracles.  She's not bitter about it.  But she fights anyway, fingernails and teeth and heels.  She doesn't draw blood but she leaves bruises.  _Hope you walk funny for_ days  _you bastard think you can just kill me and get away with it, huh, I'll show you_!

There's no breath in her body.

 _Jimmy,_ Bev wants to think.  _Brian.  Jack.  Will._ Her lungs are heaving, burning up, fire in her blood that drives everything else away.  Four seconds.  Three.  Two.  _You're gonna catch him, Will.  Abigail's alive, you're gonna catch him--_

One second, a great, roaring dark, and all Bev can think as she dies is, triumphantly, _I gotcha, you son of a bitch._


	2. matthew

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Matthew Brown was really interesting and I'm sad we didn't get more of him tbh :(

There is a moment, in the lives of all birds of prey, where a mother will push her fledgling from the nest and the fledgling will either fly or plummet to its death.  Many do fall and die--it's a tough world out there for birds of prey, what with the forests shrinking and mice running scared, steel and concrete and pesticides creeping in on what once was the kingdom of hawks and falcons, ospreys and eagles.  

But others, well. 

Matthew Brown's not really a big fan of metaphors.  They're not really his style.  But Will Graham loves them, wraps them around himself like armor, and for someone as hunted as Mister Graham feeling like a bird of prey has to feel good.

Matthew Brown wants Will Graham to feel _good._

"I know what's it's like," he says, and Mister Graham sees the truth in his eyes.  "I know what it's like to be locked up for just being what you are."  Six years inside an institution not unlike this one, pills and psychiatrists, years of silence until he learned to trick them, play the tame bird, fly on command and return to his roost. 

Mister Graham smiles crookedly.  "And what are you, Matthew?"  It's intimate, the way Will says Matthew's name.  Not sexual, not wanting, but _knowing,_ a bone-deep perception of Matthew and what he is and what he will be.  It's the reason Matthew killed the bailiff.  Birds of a feather flock together, after all, and Matthew's ready to step out into the open again, to _hunt_ and kill and do what he was fashioned to do.  He wants Will to hunt with him. 

Matthew smiles back.  Cameras are disabled, Chilton's little eavesdropping rig is disabled, Will Graham _knows_ what he is--

"A hawk," he says simply, and lets Mister Graham fill in the blanks.  "Like you."  (Matthew can't know this, but Will's nightmare, for all of its antlers and sleek black fur, has feathers too.)

"Like me."  Will cocks his head.  "Hawks are solitary hunters, Matthew.  Even nesting partners don't hunt together."

"No," Matthew agrees, and he sees feathers bursting from Will's shoulders, hands curling into talons, wings red and black and brown swelling, beating furiously at the bars of his cage.  "But imagine if they  _did._ " He's offering Will blood and freedom.  Both are dependent on each other.  If the hawk wants to live outside of the falconer's jesses, he has to hunt and kill.  Matthew learned, when his moment came.  It took a dead doctor and a stolen file, three thousand and ninety-one dollars in cash, and Matthew was a new man. 

Mister Graham's eyes shine in the dark.  This is his moment, pushed from the nest.  He's falling, he's falling, and--

"Matthew," Will says, taking flight.  Matthew can see the blood on his teeth, and it thrills through him with wild, singing satisfaction.  "I need a favor."  


End file.
